Fig. 5

PD-L1 regulates the expression of proteins related to proliferation, stemness, and p-EMT. a, b Representative immunofluorescence staining was performed to assess the expression levels of Ki-67 (a) and PCNA (b) in hTERT⁺-AM cells with either the PD-L1 vector (PD-L1-VE) or the PD-L1 overexpression (PD-L1-OE) vector (left). The quantification of the mean fluorescence intensity (MFI) for both Ki-67 and PCNA provided insights into the proliferative status of these cells (right). c Western blot analysis of stemness- and p-EMT-related protein expression was performed on hTERT⁺-AM cells transfected with either the PD-L1-OE or PD-L1-VE construct. The data are presented as the means ± SDs. Statistical significance was assessed via two-tailed unpaired Student’s t test (a–c)